Oddbean new post about login | logout A few years ago, I probably would have skipped this message after reading just the first line, but now I very much agree with everything you said. Letting the state become this big was already a huge mistake, and democracy has enabled it by giving people a false sense of control. We've basically surrendered and given up all our rights for now. Have you ever thought about some better option than democracy?
Funny thing is, I would've skipped the comment a few years ago as well. America in its original intended form is the better option. The key is unalienable rights that keep a democracy from infringing on the rights of minorities and individuals. Unalienable rights guarantee the rights of minorities and individuals. An unalieanable right is a right that cannot be taken away, not even by a 100% majority vote. Unalienable rights cannot be legislated away, and they cannot be ruled away by a supreme court. Government institutions cannot add qualifiers to unalienable rights. America is a country of unalienable rights. The Constitution does not grant those rights. The Constitution explicitly tells the government that it cannot, and shall not, infringe on those rights
Another thing is distinguishing between a forced-collectivist democracy and a freedom-democracy. In a freedom-democracy representatives can vote to create government programs, but nobody would be forced to pay for, support or use those programs. For example ... voluntary is how Social Security started out, because unalienable rights and individual liberty was how Americans thought when it was created (1935). Then the Democrats and Republicans made Social Security mandatory under Ronald Reagan because the leftists had succeeded in shifting the American mindset more towards a forced-collectivist democracy mentality and away from individual liberty and unalienable rights.